Hey, how you doing? Justin here. Today we're gonna do bit of an applied music theory and
learn the notes in the open position; that's gonna require a combination of the Note
Circle and knowing the names of the notes of the open strings, which I'm hoping you're
totally hip with now, okay? You definitely need to know you E, A, D, G, B, e; maybe
'Eddie ate Dynamite, Goodbye Eddie", is the line you're using; whatever the line, I
need you to know the open string note names and I need you to know your way around the
Note Circle, okay? So where the tones and the semitones were and the sharps and flats,
that thing, okay? The thing that you probably went, "yeah, I don't really need
that", now we're gonna use it to apply to the guitar to find all of the notes in
the open position; so we're gonna start off; this is the note 'E', which is the open
string; now the next one we wanna find is the note 'F', we're just dealing with the
white notes, okay? Don't worry about the sharps and flats yet; just where the white
notes are. So, if you look at your Note Circle, you see 'E' to 'F', that's a
semitone away; so it's one fret, so if that's an 'E', then this is the note 'F'.
The next note we want is the note 'G', we're just going alphabetically, so the 'E', 'F',
we want a 'G'; 'G' is one tone away from 'F', so two semitones, two steps, so keep
going up two and and there is, that's gonna be the note 'G', so on the thickest string,
we got 'E', 'F', and 'G'. Just use your one finger for this; this isn't practicing
a scale, this is just learning where the notes are on the guitar fretboard; that's
all we are dealing with at this stage. The open string next is the 'A' string, so
we have 'E', 'F', 'G', 'A'; the next next one is, alphabetically, is the note 'B';
have a look from 'A' to 'B' and you'll see that 'B' is a tone away from 'A'; two steps,
so that would be an 'A#', so that's the note 'B'; the next note we want is the
note 'C' that is one semitone higher that 'B', there's no sharp or flat between those.
So, now we've got 'E', 'F', 'G', 'A', 'B', 'C'; open next string is 'D'; hopefully
you remember that one. Next one we want is the note 'E', so that was a 'D', 'D#', there's
'E'; you can either use the Note Circle or just use the guitar. Next up from 'E', we
want the note 'F'; hopefully you know it's only a semitone away. The next note we
want is 'G'; that's the open string. The next note we want is the the note 'A',
that's the second fret. Next note we want is the note 'B', which is the open second
string; then 'C', one semitone away. Then 'D', which is a tone away from the third
fret; then the note 'E', which is the thinnest string; 'F' in the first fret and
'G' on the third fret, so we can count it down, 'G', 'F', 'E', 'D', 'C', 'B', 'A',
'G', 'F', 'E', 'D', 'C', 'B', 'A', 'G', 'F' and 'E'. Now, we're gonna be using this
shortly to practice scales but at this point, it's just the theory; it's just the
knowing part; I don't even care if you actually play any of the notes but I want
you to be able to workout what all of those notes are in, we call this the open position,
the first three frets. So I want you to know that there's a 'G' there, and that's the 'B'
and that's the 'D', and that's an 'E', that's a 'C', that's a 'D', that's an 'A',
that's an 'F', that's a 'G'; I want you to be able to figure out what all of the
notes are that you might wanna play in the open position. Don't worry about sharps
and flats yet; we're gonna be hitting that real soon. At this point, it's just about
knowing where the white notes are; that 'A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F' and 'G' in the
open position. You can spend some time actually practicing that in your routine,
spending a couple of minutes each practice session; just maybe putting your fingers
through and just playing the scale up and down; I'm calling it a scale, it's just by
playing the white notes up and down, looking at where they are, trying to
remember where they are and getting a real practice combining, remembering, recalling the
Notes Circle and how that works. If you feel like you're totally hip with it, like
you might find after 3 or 4 days, like, "I'm cool, I can name all of those notes",
stop practicing it and move on to something more practical; spend some extra time on
the chord changes, extra time on the rhythm, whatever it is that you need to work on.
It is the kind of thing that you need to practice until it's done; until you can
figure out where those notes are and you know where those notes are. Once you can
do that, you're cool; you can move on!